Category Archives: Tips

One of the fabulous new products in our 2014-15 Catalogue are the sets of Blendabilities markers. These alcohol-based marker sets come in a 3-pack of light, medium and dark shades (of the same colour). In addition, there’s a 6-pack skin tone assortment and a Color Lifter.

I used the Rich Razzleberry and Old Olive sets along with a light use of the Color Lifter, to create this little image.

I held back from sharing these with you as sneak peeks in the run up to the catalogue launch, as I knew that in the US the Blendabilities weren’t available straight away and I didn’t want to raise your hopes just to dash them again. Well, we’ve been much luckier. The following colour sets are all available right now:

It happens to us all at some time or other. You just catch the edge of the rubber stamp with your ink pad, it transfers to your stamped image and has the potential to spoil your card.

You can see in the stamped image below that I caught the edge of the large flower design on the left hand side, so there’s an extra little streak of ink where I don’t want it.

The card isn’t ruined, there are ways of covering up a small mistake like that (eg. stamping another design over the top in a darker ink, covering with ribbon or a punched shape etc) but if it happens more than once then it’s worth taking steps to avoid it in the future.

One solution, with clear stamps at least, is to cut away excess rubber and trim closer to the design. There are two key points to remember if you try this:

1. Do it in good light and make sure you don’t trim too close or you could cut into your design.

2. Trim any excess away at a 90° angle (i.e. straight up and down), otherwise the stamp won’t sit well on the block.

Stampin’ Up! has a great range of embossing powders (EP) but sometimes you just want something a little different – that’s the time to mix your own!

In an empty container (I keep and re-use my empty EP and Dazzling Diamond pots), simply add together a small amount of each your chosen colours, mix well and use as for standard EP (ie. with Versamark ink and a heat tool). The end result is a flecked colouring.

On a recent Christmas card I used a mix of equal parts Pewter (124114), Pool Party (129398) and Iridescent Ice (101930).

You can see the mix used here on the sentiment …

… and here on the central snowflakes.

Unfortunately you don’t get the full effect in these photos, of the Iridescent Ice sparkle, but have a go yourself and you’ll see what I mean

There are two styles, a circle (133480 – pictured right) and a label (133479 – pictured in the tips below).

I’ve got a few tips to share with you for how to get the most from these thinlits but first, here’s a short video from SU! to give you an overview of how they work.

Tip 1 – Each thinlit cuts a card that is 6″ x 5-1/2″ so you can get two thinlits from 1 sheet of A4 (seen here landscape) with a small strip left at the end and a panel cut off each thinlit (the piece you can see extending beyond the metal at the top).

Tip 2 – For mats to fit the front and back of the card with a small margin around, cut front 1-3/4″ x 5-1/4″ and back 2-3/4″ x 5-1/4″. Centre these within the thinlit but with the long edge tucked underneath the shaping (the magnetic platform helps hold these in place when running the paper through the Big Shot).

Tip 3 – For a fold-in panel, to give more writing space, cut the card 6″ x 5-3/8″ (a sliver shorter than usual) and position with the right hand side extended over the top ofthe framelit (so that it doesn’t cut it). This creates a slight crease line that forms the fold.

Here’s how the card looks when matted and folded out. The message panel is 2-1/8″ x 5-1/4″.

Tip 4 – These flip cards are slightly smaller than our regular A6 size and so they’ll fit in a standard C6 envelope (106588 – the white version on the right) with room for layers and space top and bottom. Or they’ll fit snugly into the Medium Envelopes (107297) that SU! stock (the Crumb Cake version on the left).

The Paper Doily Sizzlit (125592) is absolutely gorgeous but it does take a bit of work, poking out all the cut outs.

Tip – depending on the calibration of your die cutting machine you may find you need to add a single sheet of paper or even card as a shim to get all the blades to cut through all the way (keep the card you want to cut next to the die and place the shim on the outside of those).

Tip – if you will only see the outer circle of the doily (as in the rosette card above) then there’s no need to go to all the trouble of poking out the centre pieces, simply leave them in place.

Tip – alternatively, to make it worthwhile poking them all out, die cut another circle from the centre of the doily and you then have two pieces to use.

I’ve been using washi tape quite a lot over the last few weeks and so I thought it was time I shared a quick tip for storage of the tape.

The Tag a Bag Gift Boxes (130927) are just the right size to hold the tape with enough space to be able to reach in and fish them out comfortably. You can get all twelve of the current washi tapes into a single box.

Or why not add a little ribbon and a tag to make a great gift for a crafting friend.

Strawberry Slush Ruffle Stretch Ribbon (130023) was tied around the box and finished with a bow. The tag was created by stamping the Something Special tag from Chalk Talk* (Wood – 130631 or Clear – 130634) twice; once in Black Stazon and once in Strawberry Slush, both onto Whisper White card. The Black version was die cut with the matching Chalk Talk* framelit (129983) and the word “Special” was hand cut from the Strawberry Slush version and popped up over the top.

I recently shared this gift card holder which has something of a chevron motif running through it. As you can see, I wanted to use the chevron washi tape from the Witches’ Brew pack, but on it’s own, it would be too narrow for stamping the sentiment. The solution – build it up in rows on a piece of scrap card and then punch it out.

Washi tape was stuck down to the scrap card, one piece at a time and matching up the design until there was sufficient area covered for the sentiment. Since washi tape is low tack it’s fairly easy to lift it up and reposition it if you’re not happy with the pattern. As the tape surface has a slight gloss, you’ll need to stamp with either Stazon or Versamark and then heat emboss – dye based ink will just smudge away. (Take care when stamping as it’s easy to skid on the slick surface).

Centre the design in the back of your punch and punch away.

There’s no need to stamp the surface if you don’t want to – simply build up your washi tape over the area needed and punch out.

I recently shared this Christmas card using one of the Expressions thinlit dies. The Expressions thinlit die pack (132171) is a set of three separate words:

merry

thankful

love

The thinlits cut very very narrow script from any type of paper or card but getting them out of the die without tearing them or otherwise spoiling them does take a little bit of care.

One tip to help you remove the words more easily, is to lay a layer of wax paper, baking parchment or similar, over the top of your main layer. Here we used Gold Foil, covered it with baking parchment and then placed the die over the top (bumpy side down) before sandwiching the layers between cutting plates and running through the Big Shot.

On the reverse of the die you will see some tiny holes, by pushing gently through these with a Paper Piercing Tool or similar, you can prise the word from the die. Take care though not to push too hard or you’ll pierce the word.